


Pain and Panic, Reporting for Duty

by thevillainofthisstory



Series: Marching Inexorably Forward [6]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Gen, M/M, Panic Attacks, probably a little more ooc than previous parts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 17:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16100726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevillainofthisstory/pseuds/thevillainofthisstory
Summary: Danny is forced to confront Vlad after several weeks of successfully avoiding him. Maybe they've both been overreacting. Maybe it's time for a truce. They certainly can't make any worse decisions than they already have.





	Pain and Panic, Reporting for Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the long gap between updates! I'm trying to finish my degree and everything is a mess.  
> The boys might get a little OOC in this one, but it's time to move the plot forward. Not by much, our slow burn isn't even smoldering yet. I'm really proud of how Sam and Tucker ended up in this one, I feel like they get forgotten or ignored in a lot of pompouspep fics.

“I know I said that I’d take anything that didn’t involve garbage or going into the sewers,” Danny blurted preemptively, “but that just goes to show how much I don’t know about the importance of municipalities. Honestly, reassigning me to work with the refuse collection team would be in my best interests. Obviously, I need to be taught to appreciate the indispensable services provided by unionized workers with excellent benefits.”

Mr. Lancer stared at Danny from across his desk with one eyebrow raised. Danny resisted the urge to fidget, shoving his hands into his pockets and trying anxiously not to rock back and forth on his heels. It wasn’t embarrassment or discomfort that made Danny twitchy; it was desperation, so much desperation that he was willing to stay after school and beg Lancer, of all people, for a favor. Despite his brilliant, baffling bullshit that should have appealed to Lancer’s most basic instinct-which was to make students miserable in general, but Danny had always merited a special sort of attention when it came to scholastic agony- the English teacher didn’t seem to be buying it. That was fine, though. Danny’s plan had nothing to do with Lancer actually _believing_ him; all Lancer had to do was stick to what he was good at.

Spending the day in coveralls, a hard hat, and safety goggles while riding on the back of a truck filled with the worst garbage that Amity Park had to offer would normally have sounded like a fate worse than death. Danny knew better. Death wasn’t really all that bad, and his parents’ lab produced waste that was more noxious than anything a suburban soccer mom could leave out on the curb. Being a garbage man for a day would be a blessing in comparison with his current Career Day assignment.

“Mr. Fenton,” Lancer began tiredly, rubbing absently at his brow in what Danny assumed was a feeble attempt to stave off yet another student-induced headache, “Believe me when I tell you that nothing would bring me more satisfaction than to instill in you a greater appreciation for the public servants of this town. Unfortunately, your assignment was not my decision. You were requested. Personally.”

Danny snorted in disbelief.

“You should be honored. Our beloved mayor,” Lancer said with the utmost sincerity, “came to our staff meeting while the roster was being made. He requested you, by name, and made it very clear that you weren’t to be allowed to worm your way out of this.”

“But that’s so stupid!” Danny half-shouted in frustration. Sure, he had ignored all of Vlad’s other attempts to contact him. Given the circumstances, Danny felt that his reluctance was completely justified. It wasn’t like they had actually discussed it, but Danny was operating under the assumption that any further contact between the two halfas would be initiated by Danny. That was the best way to proceed. And Danny wasn’t really sure if he was ready to proceed, whatever that might mean. “Shouldn’t someone with an interest in holding public office be paired with the mayor? Someone who, I don’t know, doesn’t already see him multiple times a week for family dinners and game nights and stuff? This reeks of nepotism. You know it, I know it, and Vlad sure as hell-”

“ _Mayor Masters_ ,” Lancer interrupted sharply, stressing Vlad’s title like Danny was supposed to care, “has done a great deal for this town. If he chooses to show a little favor to the son of his oldest friend, obviously it can be chalked up to nothing more than gratitude for the care he received during his unfortunate bout of amnesia.

“You will report to the mayor’s office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, Mr. Fenton, or you will receive a failing grade. And since Career Day participation is a prerequisite for graduation, that would also mean you will not be graduating next May. Now, if you would be so kind as to consider your options somewhere else, I’d like to grade some papers.”

Danny marched out of the classroom, shoulders drawn. He was too angry to even care about getting in the last word.

So, he was stuck with Vlad. For an entire day. Danny should have been expecting something like this. He had ignored all of Vlad’s calls, texts, and emails. He ignored the messages that the older halfa had tried to send through various ghostly messengers. Danny had even managed to avoid being alone with Vlad for the past few Sunday dinners at the Fenton house. It had been hard, because Vlad was relentless when he wanted something, but Danny had managed. Truthfully, Danny was impressed that Vlad hadn’t forced himself on Danny sooner.

Well, that was how they had ended up in this situation to begin with, Danny thought darkly. Vlad had even admitted that he had crossed a line. But Vlad crossed lines with Danny all the time and this one wasn’t any different. It honestly and truly wasn’t. Nothing had really happened, they hadn’t even kissed. But Danny was all worked up about it, about his ~~positive~~ reaction to it. And that made him embarrassed, which made him angry. He knew that Vlad wanted to talk about it. They needed to talk about it; letting it fester like this was unhealthy. But Danny didn’t think he’d make it through the conversation with his dignity intact. Vlad always seemed to have a front row seat to Danny’s most spectacular blunders. Danny was completely fed up with always making an ass of himself in front of the older halfa.

The ground suddenly fell out from under Danny’s feet. With a yelp, he crashed down the front stairs of the school, trying and failing to use his forearms to brace himself. His nerves lit up from elbow to wrist, the sensation a mix of heat from the slide across the concrete, stinging pain from scraping off his skin, and littler pinpricks of small rocks embedded into the exposed flesh. Those had to be scraped out before his arm started to heal, or Danny would be spending the evening holed up in his room with a scalpel. Maybe Jazz was right: keeping his head jammed so far up his own ass might actually be hazardous to his health.

“Geeze Fenturd,” Dash chuckled from somewhere above him. Danny groaned. Just what his day needed. “You’re so clumsy that you hardly need me to wail on you. I mean, I’m still going to wail on you,” he promised as he hauled Danny up by the back of his shirt, “but you almost make me feel bad about it.”

Someday, Danny promised himself as he took a sucker punch to the gut, Dash was going to get what was coming to him. Because someday, he thought, as he crumpled back to the ground, Dash was going to realize that Danny was only humoring him. Hits that used to bruise and sting for weeks hardly even colored anymore. Cuts healed before they were fully formed. And Danny’s pain tolerance was so high that it was literally not human. Dash grabbed him by the hair and slammed his face back down onto the pavement. Danny groaned and pretended to struggle. They both had a reputation to maintain, after all.

“Having friends in high places doesn’t make you exempt from your daily beating, Fenton. Where’s the mayor to help you now?” Because of _course_ this was Vlad’s fault. Danny **told** Lancer that the whole thing looked like nepotism, because it **was**. And now Danny was paying for it. Sort of.

With one final kick to the ribs, Dash walked off, apparently satisfied with his work for one afternoon.

If the time ever came that keeping his secret was less important than petty teenage revenge, Danny thought as he lay there on the ground, he was going to take Dash on the ride of his life. Just grab the idiot jock by the ankle and start flying. Sure, Danny used to dream of beating Dash up, eye for an eye style. But that was back when his powers were still new. If he tried to hit Dash now it would cause the simple human teen more damage than he really wanted to inflict. Danny wanted Dash scared enough to leave him alone, not forced to eat through a straw for the rest of his life.

Danny hauled himself up, double checked that none of his clothes had been torn in the scuffle (because that tended to look suspicious) and checked his wounds. His arms were mostly healed, and nothing Dash had done had left a mark. Great, another evening locked in his room digging shrapnel out of his skin. Sighing, Danny headed for home. Sure, flying would have been faster, but Danny needed the time to himself. Thinking about all the many and varied ways that he wanted to pummel Dash, as unrealistic as that was, would distract Danny from his totally justified anxiety over spending an entire day locked in close quarters with his archenemy.

* * *

 

“Dude, he’s not going to try to kill you in the mayor’s office,” Tucker insisted.

“Especially after he just rebuilt it,” Sam added.

Danny sighed and dropped the small piece of gravel he had just dug out of his arm into the bowl on his desk. It had taken a while, but almost all the gravel had been cleaned out. “God forbid I bleed out all over his new carpet,” Danny snarked, readjusting his cellphone as he felt around his forearm for more large chunks. “No, he just wants to corner me alone somewhere I can’t get away.”

“But why?” Tucker asked through a mouthful of what Danny assumed were potato chips.

“No clue,” Danny lied. He expected to feel guilt about lying to his friends, but then the guilt never came. Which somehow made him feel more guilty; he didn’t feel bad about lying to his friends, he felt bad because it felt like he was picking Vlad over them. Which was stupid and wrong and nowhere close to the truth.

“Then how are you so sure that that’s what he wants?” Sam pressed.

“Maybe he just wants to thank you for getting his memory back. Well,” Tucker amended, “in a Vlad way. A Vlad thank you. Which is probably nothing like a normal person thank you.”

“ANYWAY,” Danny declared loudly before his teenage mind could run off with scenarios of the many delightful ways Vlad could show his appreciation, “Enough about my problems. Where did you guys get assigned to?”

Sometimes it was too easy to get caught up in his own problems. Tucker and Sam deserved more from their supposed best friend than a constant stream of ghost related complaints. For them, Danny could hide his mounting dread and just listen to their excitement over what the next day might bring.

“I got the public library,” Tucker said proudly. “They just got funding to upgrade the public computers and I wanna see if they’ll let me in on what they intend to get. Maybe I can steer them towards something better.”

“I’m pretty hyped to be going out with the garbage collectors. Tomorrow is recycling day, so I get to spend the whole day doing something good for the environment. It may not be as glamorous as what you two princesses are doing-”

“Hey!” Danny objected, “I tried to get Lancer to switch me to garbage collection but he wouldn’t bite. Apparently, his love for our illustrious mayor outweighs his hatred of me.”

“I dunno Danny,” Sam said slyly, “Maybe you’re just telling us that you met with Lancer. Maybe you just don’t want to seem too eager to spend the day doing literally nothing while trading sarcastic banter with your weird, evil uncle.”

“I mean, assuming Vlad’s not in one of his world domination moods, he’ll probably just spend the entire day making awkward comments about your mom and insulting your intelligence,” Tucker said, keeping the teasing train rolling. “Which isn’t really that different from a regular school day, if you think about it. But instead of talking about Mrs. F, all our teachers make creepy, adoring comments about your sister. And _then_ insult your intelligence.”

“Damn, guys. With friends like you two, maybe I am looking forward to spending the day with Vlad,” Danny laughed.

“Hey! What’s Vlad got that we don’t got?” Tucker demanded even though he had just been teasing Danny about potentially enjoying the assignment from hell.

“Other than the obvious,” Sam butted in. “Money, mansions, bizarre obsession with the Packers…”

“At least Vlad would help me cut all this gravel out of my arms,” Danny replied before he really considered his words, then he wanted to hit himself. It wasn’t Sam and Tucker’s fault that they couldn’t handle his various medical emergencies, and they certainly didn’t need to know that Vlad had helped him when they couldn’t.

There was a heavy pause in the conversation. Danny held his breath, torn between wanting to blurt out an apology and hoping that someone else would break first.

 “Gross,” Tucker finally said, and Danny was able to breathe again. “Is that what you’re-? Really? While we’re on the phone?”

“Vlad would probably love that. I swear, he looks like a vampire with those fangs. I wonder if they’re actually sharp or if they’re just for show?” Sam pondered.

Danny, who had been trying for weeks to not imagine just how sharp those fangs might be, squeaked out, “Well, I gotta go, there’s, um…blood and stuff. On my desk. I’ll spare you the details, gotta go, BYE!”

Ending the call, Danny tossed his phone over onto his bed. Great. At least stabbing himself with a scalpel and digging out more gravel was a surefire way to get rid of his unfortunate and completely unwanted boner.

* * *

 

At 8:47 the next morning, Danny was sitting in a chair in front of Vlad’s secretary, eyeing the clock dubiously. Anxiety had made sleeping in impossible. So Danny was up and dressed before his alarm had even gone off, which had never happened to him before. Sitting downstairs in his kitchen, staring at the clock on the microwave was an exercise in self-hate, so with nothing left to do and his anxiety mounting, Danny headed for the mayor’s office at Town Hall. His palms were sweaty, his heart was racing, and he felt a little sick to his stomach. The sooner Vlad was dealt with, the better. Hopefully.

Unfortunately, now that he had arrived at Town Hall, checked in with security and been given a badge, offered coffee by Vlad’s secretary, and told that the mayor would be arriving any moment, Danny’s jitters were worse than before. Which was stupid. It was _Vlad_. Danny had never been nervous around Vlad. Cautious, yes, but never nervous.

They needed to talk. Danny knew that. After the pheromone thing…no. This entire mess started when he messed with Vlad’s core. Right? Because it couldn’t have been before that. It’s not like they had slowly been becoming more comfortable with each other after suffering through countless family dinners and holidays and vacations. Family dinners and holidays and vacations that Vlad kept pictures of on his phone. Because they were important to him.

Shit.

Bonding with Vlad had NEVER been Danny’s intention. But it had happened. Not immediately, of course. At first, they were just as volatile with each other as they had always been. Danny had never known anyone else who could use subtext as viciously as Vlad could in what was, for anyone else who happened to be listening, a normal conversation. Danny like to think that he gave as good as he got. Words always managed to escalate to surreptitiously using their powers against each other. But slowly, so slowly that Danny hadn’t even noticed, that changed. As long as Vlad wasn’t lusting after his mom, degrading his dad, or actively trying to maim him, the older halfa was actually tolerable. Danny might even admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that Vlad’s sharp wit was actually hilarious when it wasn’t aimed at Danny.

‘Tolerable’ was still leagues away from ‘familiar and trusted enough to fuck.’

“Daniel?”

Danny jerked upright. Vlad was staring down at him, brows drawn together. Shit. He was so not prepared for this. Why had Danny agreed to this? Repeating the eleventh grade wasn’t the absolute end of the world. It was certainly better than feeling his heart try to race out of his chest. Except that his chest, in response to his heart’s escape attempt, had tightened up like a vice. If he was being honest, Danny was also having more than a little trouble breathing.

“Mrs. Clark,” Vlad said, addressing his secretary but not breaking eye contact with Danny, “Would you be so kind as to head down to the records room and snag some of their chamomile tea bags? Mr. Fenton and I will each be needing a cup.”

Danny watched, in a detached sort of way, as the secretary left the office. That was probably not the weirdest request Vlad had ever made. She probably got a nice bonus every year for not asking questions. Good help was, as Vlad liked to jibe, very hard to find.

“Breath with me, Daniel,” Vlad said, kneeling down so he was eyelevel with Danny. “In and out, in and out.”

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

It took several minutes of rapid, gasping breaths interspersed with hiccups, but Danny’s breathing finally evened out and his chest pain lessened. “I’m okay,” he muttered, glaring down at the new carpet to hide his watery eyes. He could feel the bright red flush on his cheeks and desperately hoped that Vlad wouldn’t make an issue of this.

“No, you’re not,” Vlad replied evenly. So much for that. Standing up, the older halfa reached out like he was going to help Danny out of his chair, then thought better of it. “Come along, Daniel. We have much to discuss.”

Danny silently followed Vlad into his office. Danny hadn’t been in the mayor’s office since it had been rebuilt after the fire. He considered focusing on the new décor, making a snide comment about how the carpet didn’t match the drapes, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He had just had his first panic attack in over a year. Danny was more than a little disappointed; he thought he had outgrown them. Which was kind of a stupid thing to hope, but hey, ghost powers had solved a lot of his other problems, so why not his occasional anxiety too?

Vlad sat in the fancy, ergonomic chair behind the desk while Danny flopped into one of the chairs on the not-mayoral side and closed his eyes. Panic attacks always left him exhausted. He wondered what the chances were of their conversation being short, so he could fly home and take a nap. And try to find something to treat the inevitable tension headache.

“Does that happen often?” Vlad queried gently. Danny was suddenly glad that he didn’t have the energy for a screaming match. He didn’t want Vlad to treat him like he was fragile. He didn’t want to have to deal with this. All Danny wanted was to go back a few months and tell himself to just let Vlad suffer through that stupid headache and not let his compassion override his common sense.

Danny should have known by now that procrastination never worked out well. Avoiding talking about all this shit, not just the pheromone thing but all of it, was what got him into this mess. A fucking panic attack. Danny had worked himself up into a fucking panic attack. Over _Vlad_. Fuck _that_ nonsense. It was time for an awkward heart to heart.

Maybe this was what Clockwork had meant. Danny had chosen to deal with Vlad, and then he had tried to avoid dealing with Vlad. But the choice had already been made. Or something. Now he was just avoiding Vlad’s question.

Taking a deep breath, Danny answered, “Not so much anymore. A lot when I was younger. More when I got my powers. I haven’t had one in over a year, though.”

“Were you medicated for them?”

“Yeah,” Danny said, eyes still closed, “But after the portal…”

“Of course.”

Silence.

Well, time to be the brave hero.

“In case you didn’t notice,” Danny began lightly, knowing that the joke was going to fall flat before he even finished, “I was avoiding you.”

Silence.

“But that obviously didn’t work out very well for me, since I just had a panic attack in your office,” Danny pushed on, “Sorry you had to deal with that.

“Anyway, I’ve been avoiding you for a bunch of reasons. Not just your terrible decision-making skills while under the influence. Again, you’ve done way worse things to me than grope me a little bit. I think it says some pretty fucked up things about both of us since I can just brush that off, but I can. And we are. More than a little fucked up. Individually and collectively.

“I think what my problem is, the real problem, is that at some point, I started trusting you. I like having you around. And I just…didn’t notice?”

Vlad still hadn’t said anything, and Danny wasn’t quite brave enough to open his eyes yet. Also, he felt the post-panic headache coming on. He hoped that Vlad hadn’t dipped out to get tea or something. Pouring his heart out to an empty room was even more pathetic than pouring his heart out to his nemesis. Antagonist? Were they really sworn enemies anymore? They could figure that out later.

“So that’s what freaked me out. Not realizing how, um, important you had become to me, and then you reminded me-ever so helpfully-that you’re actually a huge asshole and that I’m really supposed to hate you. But I don’t. **And not because of anything that did or did not happen at the fraternity meeting!”** Danny declared firmly. Or, he hoped it came out firmly, because it was true. Sure, he had learned some very interesting things about himself that night, but those things were not necessarily Vlad-centric. Right? Right. “You’re sarcastic and awful and you use your powers for petty shit, but hey, that’s pretty much me too. But I’m seventeen and kinda emotionally stunted, so I was just going along with what I thought was right. But it’s not.

“You were kinda right too. I was scared at my own reaction. I was scared about how much I cared, and how much what you did hurt me. Like, emotionally. Because I do trust you, and I do like you. When I don’t hate you, anyway.

“And now I’m just kind of rambling because you haven’t said anything, and my head really hurts after that stupid panic attack, and I have no idea where we’re supposed to go from here.”

 “What am I supposed to say in response to that poignant speech? Am I to beg your forgiveness? Despite your flippant assessment, my actions were criminal, and I still can’t find it within myself to regret them. Should I rage at you for ignoring me? I had considered it. Your presence here was, as I am sure you are aware, contrived by me. I needed an occasion from which you could not slip away, in a location that I controlled. It was hardly a subtle plan.

“And you came, as I suspected you would, because you are reckless and in a position of limited autonomy. Autonomy that I have once again denied without pause or contrition. I had every intention of turning this into a fight and you have the audacity to forgive me? To claim some small amount of affection for me? Daniel, have you lost your mind?”

Finally, Danny opened his eyes. The sunlight coming in through the large windows was just as awful as he thought it was going to be. Once his vision cleared, Danny almost burst out laughing. Vlad glared back at him from across the desk, red eyes glowing. There were two divots in his lower lip that Danny knew for a fact were made by the older halfa’s fangs poking through. Vlad was _pissed_. Which, as always, lifted Danny’s mood. Someday he would learn not to poke at Vlad while he was angry, but today was not that day.

“You’re still the only fruitloop here,” Danny promised gleefully. “I love how formal you talk when you’re pissed off. It really accentuates that twitch your developing in your right eye. That one!” Danny pointed to the eye in question as it began to spasm, “Just like that. Makes you look like a half-crazed vampire from 1800-something. The hair, the glowing eyes, the fangs, the weird mannerisms…too bad you’re a ghost. Now you’ll never live up to your true potential of being a reclusive vampire and writing absolutely dire novels about-”

“I am trying to be serious!” Vlad interrupted with a shout. Pushing violently away from his desk, the mayor began to pace back and forth. “I am trying to do the right thing! But you-”

“As the person in this room with more experience in doing the right thing,” Danny piped in, “I can promise you that it’s hardly ever worth it and kinda irrelevant in this case. The right thing to do would be, like, you letting me get in a free shot and then never seeing each other again. But that’s dumb.”

Danny was waiting for Vlad to agree with him, but all the older halfa did was slow his pacing a bit. Danny waited. And waited some more. Because Vlad wasn’t really implying that-no. Was it possible for one man to be wrong so many, many times in a row? Vlad had to be setting a record here.

“That was your big plan?” Danny demanded, leaping out of the chair and stopping right in front of Vlad, halting the pacing and forcing the older man to look him in the eyes. “Let me kick your ass and then avoid each other for what might potentially be literally forever? You are really bad at this whole ‘life decisions’ thing.”

“Daniel, I knowingly put you in a situation that-”

“Shut up!” Danny interrupted, half hoping that might provoke Vlad into doing something other than being an idiot. No such luck. Yet again, despite all the threats, Vlad let it slide. “What do I have to say to get it through your thick head? I’m FINE. You’re forgiven, or whatever. Even for the stupid ‘erasing your memories’ thing, you’re forgiven. For the love of god, let’s just move on. Please.”

“Move on to what?” Vlad asked gruffly, breaking their staring contest to fuss with one of his cufflinks. Prissy bastard. “Awkward family get togethers and the occasional sparring match? There is no ‘moving on’, Daniel, because neither of us realized how we got to this point until it was too late.”

“What do you want?” Danny blurted out in frustration. Vlad glanced up from his cufflink and raised a single eyebrow. Danny felt his cheeks immediately flush. Yeah, he walked into that one. “Other than that, you demented fruitloop! That’s not on the table and you know it, mister I-regretted-my-actions-so-much-that-I-blew-up-my-house-and-erased-my-memory-with-a-ghostly-artifact-that-I-didn’t-understand. It might surprise you to know that you actually do have a little bit of basic decency. It surprised me too.”

“I’m certain I have no idea what you are referring to,” Vlad sniffed indignantly.

Danny wasn’t about to be derailed. “You’ve been trying to get my attention for _weeks_. What do you want from me?”

Aaaaannd silence.

Vlad cleared his throat awkwardly and turned to look out the window behind his desk. Danny waited, as patiently as he could. It was a loaded question. It was a personal question. Feelings were involved. This was everything that Danny had been dreading about the conversation. Fixing the mess between them required a degree of honesty and trust that neither of them were comfortable with. Danny was fighting the urge to retract the question, deflect with humor, and get the hell out, so he could only imagine how Vlad must have been feeling.

“I want what I have always wanted, ever since that freak accident twenty years ago.”

The first thing that came to mind was Danny’s mom, and that was just not going to happen. Danny had his mouth open, ready to give Vlad a piece of his mind, then stopped. Sure, Vlad had been fixated on his mom. But that fixation had moved to Danny himself with little fanfare. Most people, Danny assumed, didn’t give up on the supposed love of their life just because they found out that said love interest had a kid with spooky ghost powers. So, he became Vlad’s new obsession, with the cloning attempts and other various bullshit.

What did those scenarios have in common? If he wasn’t failing Literature, Danny thought irritably, he might be able to analyze those scenarios better. His mom was the object of Vlad’s misplaced…affections. Danny was his potential protégé. What did those have in common?

Nothing, really.

Okay, maybe he could look at it from a different angle. Pretend to be Vlad. Wake up in a hospital with a horrible, uncurable illness. No friends around, family left behind on purpose when he went to college. The next part, Danny was intimately familiar with: acquire freaky ghost powers, panic, try to get a hold of yourself. Fail. Panic some more. Trial and error, in secret, honing his new abilities. Then a series of morally reprehensible actions that made Vlad a billionaire; Danny was less familiar with that part. Find out that the girl he was sweet on back in the day got married, try to woo her again anyway, fail. Find out her son has ghost powers. Try to force the kid to join him and fail. Keep trying to force the kid, keep failing.

The only thing that was adding up was the fact that Vlad, despite the ghost powers and money and power, was kind of a huge failure. Everyone he kept trying to force into his life was-

Force into his life.

“Holy shit,” Danny whispered. Vlad’s posture stiffened. “You’re lonely? You’re really **that** lonely?”

“It honestly took you this long to figure that out?” Vlad snarled, whirling around to face Danny. “All the jibes about getting a cat-”

“Okay.”

That shut Vlad up. Danny looked at him and tried to take in the whole picture that was Vlad Masters. How much of his angsty bullshit came from being abandoned by his friends? How many bad decisions did he make because there was no one around to tell him not to be an idiot? This was probably a colossally bad idea. They were going to need to set some explicit, firm boundaries. But Vlad didn’t want to be alone, and Danny wanted Vlad around. So this was the perfect (he hoped) compromise.

“Okay…what?” Vlad asked cautiously. Danny walked over to stand next to him at the window. It wasn’t a bad view of the town, but the mayor’s office had nothing on the view he could get from the sky. Vlad knew that too, Danny had seen the picture on his phone. There were only two of them, after all. Maybe this was the fulcrum upon which all else turned, or whatever other ominous shit that Clockwork had spouted.

“Okay, you can mentor me. You get to have my smiling face float through your walls at all hours of the day, keeping you company in the most annoying way possible. And I get someone to talk to about weird ghost shit and a place to dig gravel out of my arms in peace. It’s a win-win.”

Vlad was staring so hard at the top of Danny’s head that he was surprised it didn’t catch on fire. It did feel like kind of an abrupt change in the status quo. Danny wasn’t really sure if it would even work out. He figured they had about a fifty-fifty chance of either killing each other or not, which was better than it used to be.

“We’re going to kill each other,” Vlad said flatly.

Danny snorted. “Probably,” he agreed, “But we were probably going to end up doing that anyway.”

Sighing, Vlad turned to face the window as well. “I suppose I am willing to go along with this madness. We made it this far without any concerted effort. If we were to try…”

“We’ll need to make, like, rules and stuff. Because you’re still an evil egotistical asshole and I still get way too invested in pissing you off.”

They stood in front of the window for a few more minutes, lost in thought. They were actually going to try this. After three years of telling Vlad to fuck off, Danny had just volunteered to become his pupil. Maybe he _had_ gone insane. Or maybe growing up had taught him a little something about empathy. Nah, that sounded too much like personal growth.

An almost-too-warm hand landed on the back of Danny’s neck. The heat radiated down, deep into the tense muscles. Danny could practically feel the tension draining out as Vlad rubbed in a firm circle with his thumb. “Headache, little badger?” Vlad asked lightly. “I always ended up with a headache after….”

Danny nodded blissfully. “Spooky ghost powers to the rescue,” he sighed. If this is how training with Vlad was going to be, then maybe he had been missing out. Maybe.

“Well, having wasted,” Vlad began, dropping his hand from Danny’s neck and turning around, “Roughly half an hour of my day, perhaps now we can finally accomplish some actual work?”

Oh right, Career Day. Another thing that Danny was pissed at Vlad about. “Why couldn’t you have just let me go with the garbage collectors?” he whined.

Vlad chuckled, but didn't deign to respond. Danny figured that he was pretty much doomed.

* * *

 

“Alright, Mr Fenton, impress us with what you learned at your Career Day assignment,” Mr Lancer drawled.

Danny actually felt pretty confident about his presentation, which was something he hadn’t felt in school for a long time. Working with Vlad had been a nightmare at some points, but there were few things Vlad loved more than talking about himself. Danny had learned more about being the mayor of Amity Park than he had ever thought possible. There was more to being mayor of Amity Park than he ever thought possible, but even Vlad had admitted that most of the day to day drudgery was left up to clones. That was one trick of the trade that Danny would not be sharing.

“So, as all of you probably know by now, Vlad-I mean, Mayor Masters- went to college with my parents. You probably think that I got assigned to him because of preferential treatment or something, and that’s not true. I got assigned to the mayor because I called him a lazy piece of shit who does nothing but sign papers all day and roll around his too big office in a fancy chair, all paid for by our taxes,” Danny lied. Honestly, if someone had told him the projects and presentations were mostly made up of lies that sounded good, he’d probably have straight A’s.

“I’m sorry Mr Fenton, you said what to the mayor?” Mr Lancer interrupted, completely aghast. The rest of the class, even Sam and Tucker, were gaping at him in horror. Imagine if they knew how he and Vlad actually talked to each other; they’d probably faint from shock due to the impropriety of it all or something.

“He didn’t like it either, so he made me spend the entire day in Town Hall with him to see exactly what he does. Did you guys know that in Amity Park, the mayor has veto power over the town council? That’s called the council-strong mayor system and it’s basically the system we’ve used in Amity Park since the town was founded. The mayor also personally oversees the police, fire, and transportation departments. Every time a ghost destroys the train or busts up the roads, the mayor has to deal with it. The first thing we did was go down to the records room to look up…”

* * *

 

“Dude, is that…?” Tucker asked, peering over Danny’s shoulder.

“I think it is, but I can’t be sure. It’s been a while since I’ve seen one,” Danny replied, unable to keep the awe out of his voice. There must have been a mistake. Maybe Vlad called and promised extra funding for the school or something, since most public-school funding comes from state and local levels of government. Great, he had actually managed to learn something from that career day farce.

“Unexpectedly exceptional work on your Career Day assignment, Mr Fenton,” Lancer called over from the bus lane. Danny waved in response. He couldn’t stop grinning.

Pulling out his phone, Danny fired off a quick text message.

“Sam, look what Danny got,” Tucker said, yanking the paper out of Danny’s hand to wave in Sam’s unamused face.

“Give me that,” she snapped, grabbing Tucker’s arm and prying the paper out of his grasp. “Daaaaannng Danny. Is that?”

“One-Hundred Percent A Plus,” he declared proudly. And only about half of it was bullshit. It had to be. Danny couldn’t write a paper on what he and Vlad had _actually_ talked about. Even after their little heart to heart, the conversation tended to inevitably head towards ghost stuff or personal history or devolve into a shouting match. But, much to his own surprise, Danny had actually learned a lot. Most of it was from Vlad’s secretary while Vlad was on the phone, but he had learned a lot. And he was proud of his grade.

His phone buzzed again.

“Telling Jazz that she’s not the only Fenton pulling A’s these days?” Sam joked as she handed his paper back. Danny shoved it unceremoniously into his backpack. He was proud of it, but he wasn’t about to let his sister pin it to the fridge or anything crazy.

“Yeah, she thinks I cheated. You mess up time and space one time by almost cheating on a test, and she’s never let me forget it.”

“You’re life is weird, dude. Really, really weird,” Tucker declared as they started walking home.

Glancing at his phone again, Danny had to agree. It was all really, really weird. Hopefully, things were going to get better. Getting a perfect score on an assignment was a pretty good way for things to start out.

**Author's Note:**

> "The Fates are not quite obdurate; they have a grim, sardonic way of granting them who supplicate the thing they wanted yesterday."  
> -Roselle Mercier Montgomery


End file.
